Floyd Landis In Yellow!
So now it begins, yesterdays stage ended with a handful of GC men battling it out for top contention. Menchov, Landis and Leipheimer were the first men to finish the stage followed by Cadel Evans, Carlos Sastre and Michael Boogerd. Stage 11 was by far the most difficult stage to date in this years tour and featured one HC climb and four category one climbs which shattered the peleton. Big losers of the day included George Hincapie and Paolo Savoldelli (both Discovery Channel) who lost more than 20 minutes on the stage.
Floyd rode a very tactical race near the end as he was isolated with no team mates in sight. Surprisingly it was the work done by the power house German squad T-Mobile that put Floyd in an idea situation. T-Mobile attacked on the second to last climb of the day, the attack splintered the peleton into a select group of about 10 riders. At the base of the last climb it was the Rabobank squad that continued with the tempo as the prepared to launch their team leader Denis Menchov.
By this time T-Mobile had all but self imploded as Andreas Kloden began to drop off the back in the closing kilometers, once Landis saw this he began to work and finished off the tempo riding understanding that he was putting time in one of his rivals for the overall title (Kloden).
Levi Leipheimer looked strong yesterday, it was great to see him find his form again. Too bad he has been feeling off over the first week and a half, his ride yesterday moved him up to 13th overall on GC. Not bad considering he was way, waaaay … down on the classification. Levi is now 5 minutes and 39 seconds of the pace of Landis. Not impossible to reduce in the mountains. However I think Levi will have a darn tough time loosing Floyd. A podium position in France however is very much still in the cards if Levi can ride well in the 3 alp stages coming up next week (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) and do well in the final time trial.
Floyd leads to tour by a mere 8 seconds, the same margin that American Greg Lemond won the Tour back in the late 80,s.
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